Syncing up with God

When you watch the news you’ve got to say that something isn’t quite right with the world. Day in , day out humans find unique ways of hurting each other, themselves and the environment around them. We really are very good at it. But this wasn’t how God created things to be.

God made humans to be perfectly synced up. Now try and absorb this…In sync with God. In sync with each other. In sync with ourselves. In sync with the environment.

But then it got all messed up and we started living out of sync with all those things. Think about it – every single problem in the world can be put down to one of those things. At the root of today’s problems isn’t politics or wars or sexism or racism or greed. The big thing behind all of those things is that we have lost the natural ability to live in the right relationship with ourselves, with other people, with the environment, and ultimately, with God.

This is big news! It’s easy to look at the world and say “There’s so many problems! But what’s the root cause here? I bet Democracy would sort this out!” But now that we know what the root behind the scenes problem where all the other problems come from– it’s easier for us to get our heads around it, and for us to work out how to make things better and live better ourselves.

And that’s what Jesus came to help us with – to save us from. He came to teach us how to get back in Sync with God’s plan and to teach us how he made us to be.

Being a follower of Jesus means living a life that tries to get back in sync with all of these things… while at the same time not expecting to get it perfect – because our in-syncness can only be totally restored by God.

That’s what Heaven is – at the end of our long struggling human history, where we continued to find new and marvelous ways to live our of sync with everything, God will recreate us so we will have the right relationships with everything. The bible verse we just heard from in Romans talks about how the earth Groaning for this recreation to come… When I look at the newspaper I groan for this recreation to come!

If there is one thing I’m really excited about – even more excited about than owning a pair of Llamas or eating Polenta Fries at the Bicycle Thief or looking into the eyes of my first child after they’re born – it’s for the day that God recreates all of us to live in Synch with things.

That day I won’t be oppressed by my own personal emotional, mental and sexual baggage, and I’ll be able to live in harmony with the people around me, and I won’t feel this need to take more than I need from the earth – and I’ll finally have those nagging questions answered about God.

The song of life is not being played right – we’re singing flat and we’re not even using our instruments most of the time, like trying to play Mozart on a car radiator. But it’s time for us to pick up those guitars, warm up our voices and play in Sync with the Song that God wrote for us to play. Trust me, it’s a much better song than we could ever write.

Look through a newspaper and circle the stories where pain, disorder or suffering has resulted from the breakdown of relationships between people. Ask yourself these questions as you look at each story: